Blood On My Name
by NotoriouslyN
Summary: Thea has to carry the burden of her father's sins, and she has to decide if she wants to join his cause.


Thea crossed her legs, and matched the intensity of his gaze with her own. Where she once scorned her parentage, she could now appreciate where she came from. She knew him for the psycho-villain he was, and it was all that mattered. There will be no more lies and half- truths. He promised her as much, and she was willing to take her chances with the man who wanted to be her father.

Malcolm had known that his appearance in his daughter's time of need would be reciprocated with an overwhelming hatred for him. But Thea had done so much more than that when she fired two shots into him. He felt a glowing pride at the way she handled the weapon, and that was the mark of a Merlyn. As for the circumstances that has led her to seek him out, he was not unprepared to have Thea leave Starling City with him. It was as he told her, that there was not much about his daughter that he did not know. He made it his business to know that Roy Harper was the Arrow's latest recruit.

* * *

She had dozed off in her seat. When she woke, she had a jacket over her and a pillow wedged against her head that had lolled at an uncomfortable angle. Across from her, Malcolm was staring out the window, his legs crossed and his face turned to the passing scenery of where they were about to land soon. When she looked at his hands, it was clasped around a glass of amber liquid. She closed her eyes again, feigning continued sleep, because she didn't feel like doing anything else. Talking to him was the last thing she wanted to do, and she didn't think he liked being disturbed in his most private moments.

"I know you're awake." Her father turned to look at her, his eyes full of faraway thoughts, or perhaps just full of the land beyond the window. After a minute, he smiled.

"In case you haven't noticed, I'm not in the mood to make small talk." She crossed her arms in a defiant gesture, making it clear that she only saw him as a way out, and not as a father.

"I expect the owner of Verdant to be more of the sociable type."

"Aren't you even going to try convince me to follow in the footsteps of my mass murdering parents?" He was supposed to be the cruel despot who was overjoyed to know he has a daughter to continue on his legacy of murder and terrorism.

"I do not seek your forgiveness for my actions." Malcolm felt no remorse for the destruction he had unleashed upon Starling City. The Undertaking had given him a purpose in his time of sorrow, and kept his mind and heart occupied enough to not dwell on Rebecca's death. He realized long ago that nothing could replace her or fill the void that she left, but it would assure Tommy of a future with fewer shadows. Let justice be served in the name of a woman who died at the very hands of those whom she serviced with the utmost kindness. The city had to be cleansed for the greater good. Perhaps then, he would finally be purged of his guilt for leaving his wife to bleed her life out into a Glades sewer drain.

He paid for all that pain and anger with his only living memory of her. _Their_ son. And here he was again with another child of his who had just lost her mother. For now, Rebecca's death was his own to carry. They both needed to mourn for the mother of his child, as undeserving of their grief as she may be.

"Why are you even alive?" She spat the question out. "Tommy didn't deserve to die. You should have gone instead." Her eyes were now pits of fire, fueled by an insurmountable hate and rage for the man she was related to by blood. He knew how much his son had meant to the Queen siblings, and in comparison, how little he himself had meant to them, to his son. Malcolm had been too blind to see that in his wife's absence, Tommy needed him more than the child could ever tell him. Back then, Malcolm was a man broken by love, and tainted by his one- off affair with Moira. He didn't like admitting that he hadn't done as good a job at parenting as Rebecca had.

* * *

The drive to the Merlyn property in the outskirts of Budapest was silent. Following his apparent death in the hands of the Arrow, he had the mansion's ownership transferred to a Hungarian who only existed in records but not in person. She had barely said anything to him since the jet touched down, becoming only more fascinated by the foreign landscape. Budapestians, too, paused to look at the scene, as if they, too, could never get enough of it. The land outside was beautifully green and fresh, and the onion cupolas of an Orthodox church peeked out of curtains of yellow- leaved willows. Malcolm sighed on the other end of the town car.

"Why this place?"

He took a breath before answering. Thea didn't know if it was his relief at finally having the silence broken, or his hesitation showing through. All she did know was that he would answer her question.

"Rebecca and me used to spent our holidays here. This city had left her in awe of its identity. She loved it because it was neither quite Western, nor Eastern, nor Northern European." Malcolm looked down, at his hands resting on his knee. "After she died, well, I didn't dare return."

A quick calculation in her head and she was starting to guess that she got it about right. "Because you had something going on behind her back?"

"I did not cheat on Rebecca." His voice became hard and his words clipped into place, telling her that she'd hit a nerve.

"I'm sure you'll have a better explanation for my existence here." She snorted, and mistaking his silence as an admission of what had transpired between him and her mother, continued, "That's all you've got to say?"

"What we had was complicated. And it's not what you think it is."

"Oh, really?" This ought to be interesting. "I can handle more than "It's complicated".

He glanced over at the daughter he'd only recently knew he had, who had in the past few hours refused to even talk to him. "It happened in the week following Rebecca's death. I wasn't handling it too well... and Moira came over with tears in her eyes. She found out about Robert's mistress, a woman by the name of Isabel Rochev. We were both hurting, and lonely." He rubbed a hand over his face, looking every inch as embarrassed as he should be. "She was a good friend, but it mattered not back then. We wanted the comfort of another human being, and that was it." Malcolm shook his head. "I felt so guilty that I left the country... and my son."

_Isabel Rochev._

"I've met her." Thea had never really talked to the woman who had been running Queen Consolidated in Oliver's place, but she had always disliked her. It was not until she showed up at Verdant with an eviction notice, though, that Thea had any personal reasons to detest the woman. She should have known that her interest in the the family- run enterprise was personal, and not just any corporate hostile takeover.

His eyes flicked over for a split second, their depths unfathomable. "The woman you speak about is now dead, killed by the League. She works for the man who killed your mother."

She refocused her attention on the world outside, eyes meeting that of her reflection in the tinted glass. Thea only hoped she would catch herself before she was too long gone.


End file.
